A MATTER OF LIFE & DEATH - DVD-CRITERION COLLECTION

Details

• Release Year: 1946
• Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
• Plot: After miraculously surviving a jump from his burning plane, RAF pilot Peter Carter (David Niven) encounters the American radio operator (Kim Hunter) to whom he's just delivered his dying wishes and, face-to-face on a tranquil English beach, the pair fall in love. When a messenger from the afterlife arrives to correct the clerical error that spared his life, Peter must mount a fierce defense for his right to stay on earth—painted by production designer Alfred Junge and cinematographer Jack Cardiff as a rich Technicolor Eden—climbing a wide staircase to stand trial in a starkly beautiful, black-and-white modernist heaven. Peppered by humorous jabs intended to smooth tensions between the wartime allies Britain and America, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's richly humanistic A Matter of Life and Death traverses time and space to make a case for the transcendent value of love.
• Cast: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron, Richard Attenborough, Bonar Colleano, Joan Maude, Marius Goring, Roger Livesey, Robert Atkins, Bob Roberts, Edwin Max, Betty Potter, Abraham Sofaer, Raymond Massey, Robert Arden, Robert Beatty, Tommy Duggan, Erik, John Huntley, John Longden, Howard Marshall, Lois Maxwell, Richard Neilson, Wally Patch, Laurence Payne, Robert Rietty, Roger Snowdon, Spangle, Wendy Thompson, Frederick Valk, Geoff van Rijssel, Joan Verney, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
• Director: Michael Powell
• Runtime: 1:44
• Company: The Criterion Collection, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Inc.
• Media Format: Movie